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POLITICO 44

Time and again the search giant served as a punching bag — for the committee chairman, for the Hollywood lobby and for the U.S. Copyright Office. A lone Google employee, copyright counsel Katherine Oyama, was left to defend the company against charges that it facilitates copyright infringement online and to persuade lawmakers that the bill is rife with unintended consequences.

Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) kicked off the hearing by accusing Google of trying to “obstruct” the committee’s consideration of SOPA. He brought up Google’s recent $500 million settlement with the Justice Department for helping online Canadian pharmacies reach American consumers by letting the drug companies place advertisements through its AdWords programs.

“Given Google’s record, their objection to authorizing a court to order a search engine to not steer consumers to foreign rogue sites is more easily understood,” Smith said.

And so it went for Google, which is trying to fend off questions from regulators and lawmakers about whether it is playing fair with competitors and adequately protecting users’ privacy.

Oyama was the only witness invited who opposed the legislation, causing critics to charge that the hearing was stacked. Other witnesses included representatives for the Motion Picture Association of America, AFL-CIO, Pfizer, MasterCard and the Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante, who back the bill.

Oyama argued that the bill would ensnare innocent websites that are not violating copyright law and discourage entrepreneurs from creating the next big Web innovation. The legislation would give the attorney general the power to seek a court order barring search engines from providing a direct hypertext link to an infringing site or forcing ad networks to cut off transactions with illicit sites.

The head of the U.S. Copyright Office said she had great respect for Google but noted that people can easily find illegal entertainment content online through the search engine.

“If you conduct a search for the phrase ‘download movies, the Google search engine will supply the words ‘for free,’ and it will return a list of sites that offer illegal copies or streams at no charge and with no advertising,” said Maria Pallante, the Register of Copyrights. “These cases require a different kind of strategy other than following the money.”

But a “follow the money” approach is precisely what Oyama said the situation calls for. She noted that WikiLeaks suffered a huge blow when payment processors began choking off the funds to the site.

“As long as there is money to be made pushing pirated and counterfeit products, tech savvy criminals around the world will find ways to sell these products online,” Oyama said. “We urge you instead to target the problem at the source — shut down illegal foreign sites by cutting off their revenue.”